One of the most important things to make for Halloween is a Trick or Treat Bag to collect the sweets ;) Every year I try and make something a little different or unusual and here are a few of my past successes!
Pumpkin Bags
This is a messy one but really fun for kids who need or like that kind of thing. First you need some paper bags. We bought ours but there are some shops that have plain bags that you can collect. You can even ask a shop for free bags even if they have a logo on one side. They may actually be happy for the free advertisement.
To make the pumpkin you need some wool. I used a wool that was mainly orange but had streaks of yellow and green in it. You can't see it very well in the picture above but it looked really cool. You could use lots of different colours if you want but after all the classic pumpkin is orange ;)
Help the kids draw a pumpkin shape in pencil on the bag. Otherwise you will just have a mess that will resemble a smashed pumpkin ;) Then dunk strips of wool into a watery glue (
Marvin) mixture and lay them on the bag and leave them to dry. Tip : Don't mix the glue with too much water because it will just get the bag very wet and will take longer to dry.
When the pumpkin is dry all you need to do is cut out some eyes, a nose and mouth and maybe a little green stalk. All done!
I am pretty sure that wallpaper paste would also work. An easier and less messy version would be to just put glue on the bag and let the kids add the wool but that isn't as much fun ;)
Black Cat Boxes
This is one of my favourite ideas up until now and it all came about because I didn't want to throw my
Whiskas cat treat boxes away. They looked too cool to just put in the bin and so I kept collecting them and hoped that one day I would have a use for them. Then Halloween came along and my moment came!
Of course if you aren't a cat owner you won't have access to these boxes but maybe you know someone who does or you can even ask the parents. The boxes are pink but I took off the labels and we painted them black. Be careful what paint you use for this. A lot of paints will just flake off so I used an Acrylic paint.
When the paint was dry we added wiggly eyes, tissue paper ears and nose, black bast for the whiskers and painted on a mouth. The cat also got a nice black pipe cleaner tail which you can just about see on the side.
The result was better than I expected and the kids loved having their own witch's cat! They even called them 'Wilburs' like the cat from their favourite series,
Winnie the Witch.
Please note that these boxes are not very big and will not hold a lot of sweets. This is good for us because we only give out a certain amount which fit in this box nicely. There is a bigger size but they aren't the kind my kitties prefer so make sure you collect the ones you really want.
Pumpkin Boxes
After making the cat boxes I decided to start collecting the
cat treat boxes from a different company called Multi Fit. They are round in shape and I hoped I would also find a use for them someday. I love to recycle stuff if I can. It is good for the kids to see that they don't always need something new and that old stuff can still be useful!
Anyway, with Halloween on the way I came up with this idea! The Pumpkin box! Really easy to make and I think they look pretty cool!
I just peeled off the labels and painted the box orange. I used black moosgummi (foam rubber) to cut out the eyes, nose and mouth and then added a green pipe cleaner to the top. Later I added some black stripes/markings with a permanent pen because it looked a little bland. Now I think it looks great.
I didn't have to glue on the face because I added the pieces while the paint was still wet! So maybe you want to get your kids to cut those pieces out before painting.
Once again these boxes aren't big but big enough for our treats. You could also use other containers you have lying around. Maybe there is a food product in your country that has the right shape? Always be on the look out for things you can use again.
Do you have any Treat bags arts & crafts ideas you want to share?
Feel free to add them in the comments section!
Do you remember that song by Boney M? Brown Girl in the Ring? Well this next Good Morning song uses that melodie. I actually got the idea from a book I looked through and then wrote the song to fit my needs.
Nick Sharratt was unknown to me until I came across a copy of his funny book 'Ketchup on Your Cornflakes'. The style of the book was new to me but a huge hit. Turn the bottom half of the page or the top half of the page to make funny combinations that get the kids talking. 
The complicated English terms are easily translated by the children due to the lovely illustrations which means this book teaches some new English words without you having to do anything but read out loud. Not a story book but still a great book to have in your teaching library.
The third and last book I want to recommend is What's in the Witch's Kitchen. While some of the content may be a little harder for younger learners of the English language, the illustrations are so well done that you will find it easy to explain.
There are no songs in English I could use except Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and not much else I could offer in English except some stories about it being light and dark. However over the years I have written my own songs and even made some lanterns. Here are a couple of my lanterns...
There are so many ways you can decorate the lanterns and I have seen so many different ones over the years. However this is one I made a couple of years ago that I really liked. 
Pumpkin Boxes
I have seen lots of conker arts & crafts projects with conkers using toothpicks/cocktail sticks to make people or animals but they also fall apart so easily. So one year I made these conker people.
I like to start my Morning circles with a Good Morning song. I got into this habit because that is exactly what my German speaking colleagues would do. 
There are so many great songs you can sing during the Halloween season. These songs are not written by me but are songs I found over the years that you may have even seen somewhere else. Of course I may have adapted them slightly by changing words around but I won't call them my own.
This is one is particularly good song for the kids to play along with. Sit in a circle and pick a Witch. As you sing her verse she goes around in the center of the circle. When you finish singing 'wants a cat', the child/witch can then pick herself a cat to go with her. This continues until you have five children in the middle. At the end the five go around and scare the rest of the children. The last person picked (in my version the spider) gets to pick the next witch.
It is finally October and I am really excited about making more Ghoulish crafts! 
